Worse than a DementorNecessity
by Seor
Summary: A one-shot, written on the spot for a prompt. I know the premise might be a bit confusing, but what I really just want to focus on is the emotional part. Slightly AU since the facts don't really match with the books.


They were giving him that look again.

It was the look they always wore when Harry had to take responsibility for something, when life and the universe or Albus Dumbledore threw some great, impossible task at the Boy-Who-Lived and then everyone would expect him to take on the challenge, and to succeed in doing whatever it was he was obligated to do. Hermione's eyes were full of pride and of something almost like reverence. Ron didn't even bother to hide the annoyed look of jealousy on his face, but even he could not hide his secret worship for the Hero of the Wizarding World.

"Harry, you're going to be amazing, I just know it." Hermione looked like she wanted to throw herself onto Harry, but he was glad that she merely looked down to blink the tears from her eyes.

Those weren't even tears of sadness. He could die any minute now and she was crying because he was going to bring glory to the Gryffindor House again.

Harry swallowed a lump in his throat.

Ron moved stiffly, placing an arm awkwardly around their friend's trembling shoulders. He glanced up at Harry, a sort of determination in his eyes.

"You're going to do great Harry. I – we believe in you."

Harry desperately wanted to tell his friends, to make them listen. He was begging them to notice, he'd been begging them to _understand_ for the past year now, but every time he broke down they merely shut him out, telling him he'd be alright, telling him that killing Voldemort would be a cinch – after all, he was Harry freakin' Potter, wasn't he?

"Guys I – I don't want to –"

"Mate, you're gonna go out there and show those Death Eaters who's boss. None of them will stand in your way. Killing them will be a cinch for you, you know that."

The smile on Harry's face was so forced he was sure his friends had to know by then how he really felt, but even then they turned their backs on him and he was alone again.

Harry didn't head out to the grounds, not just yet. Not because he was afraid, because he'd already resigned himself to his sure fate a long time ago. His only fear was that he would die alone, pretending to be someone he was not. He wanted to have a choice, his own choice, for once in his life.

"Sirius," Harry said, as he burst into Dumbledore's office, breathless and feeling as if the numbness he'd been carrying around for the past year was increasing tenfold, "Mad-Eye. Remus. Snape. My parents. I'm going to die, aren't I?"

The aged genius had his back turned to him, so all Harry couldn't see was the face of the man who had set him up like this.

"Harry."

"Ginny. I love her. And maybe I won't in a decade. I might have kids you know. I would be the most amazing father to them. To Teddy as well. I will do amazing things, Dumbledore."

"Harry."

"Doesn't even have to be amazing. I could just live my life quietly, even as a Muggle. Hagrid. I promised we'd raise another Hippogriff together. I was going to be Luna's future husband's best man. I was going to lose a game of chess to Hermione and read a hundred books in a year. I was going to just go to the top of the CN Tower and look down on the world and just know that I _was alive_."

"And knowing Voldemort, if he wins he will never allow any of that to happen!" For the first time since Harry had met the Headmaster, the older man's voice rose, against him, "Your friends, your loved ones, they will live a life of hell."

"I don't want to –"

"There have been tons of people before you who have sacrificed a great deal for goodness, Harry."

"_I never had the choice_."

"Yet you will go out there tonight, and you will face Voldemort."

"You've counted on that all these years, eh?"

"You won't let others die for you anymore."

"Yet you will let me die for you."

Dumbledore sighed, and half raised his charred hand up, before lowering it again.

"In my state, the Dark Lord will finish me off, and he'll know by then that we're declaring war on him. If you go, he will not allow anyone else but himself to fight you."

"He will kill me."

A slight, almost gentle pause.

"It is necessary."

Harry Potter stood stock still, and for once in his recent life, a sense of peace settled down upon him. His bitterness, malevolence still lingered, and it was from that pocket of his consciousness which he drew his next words from.

"I hate you. I hate you and those so-called friends of mine. Not because you've all sent me to my death, you've orchestrated my death from the moment of my birth. But because all this time, I've been screaming, just screaming for you to notice how I, as a human being, not just a tool, feel. Not once did any of you stop to think and wonder that I would want someone to talk to, to confide in. I'm not the hero you make me to be. You know what? I think you're just afraid. You're afraid that if it's not me, it'll be no one else. That you'll die. So you put your faith in me, refusing to believe I could be anything other than what you want. You have murdered me. You have taken my life, my personality, my very being. You're worse than a Dementor."

Harry turned away from the person he had once idolized, the man he had once trusted. The last words he heard from Dumbledore were uttered while he was still just barely within earshot:

"It is necessary."


End file.
